Gene Mods
List of Positive Gene Mods Naturally Bulky Cost: 1 Gene Point Max Times Taken: 2 Description: Putting on muscle has never been difficult for your character, and they’ve always had a higher muscle density than most people, but that mass sometimes slows them down. They gain +1 STR and END, but -1 DEX, per instance of this gene mod. Iron-Infused Bones Cost: 3 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: No matter what path they take in life, your character finds that they can take a beating like no other person, and gains +1 max HP per 2 END, totaling 5HP per 2 points of END (Round down). However, healing them is more expensive, and they receive -1HP of healing to vitals from all sources. Titanium-Infused Bones Cost: 4 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Your character has taken direct hits that would have killed other people and only suffered minor bone fractures, and gains +1 max HP per END, totaling 3HP per point of END. However, healing them is much more difficult, and checks to heal vital damage on them are 1 MFD harder, as well as healing them is more expensive, and they receive -1HP of healing to vitals from all sources. Empathy Overdrive Cost: 3 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Your character is extremely good at appealing to the emotions of other beings, and can understand what drives people, allowing exploitation, for better or worse. If your character has never given a person reason to doubt your character’s motives that they can remember, such as lies that mean them harm, or breaking their trust in some way, your character gains a +1 MFD bonus to all CHA rolls against them, and people often feel strangely compelled to be honest with you. Keep in mind, it’s possible for a reputation to make them wary even before a first meeting. Circuit-Sympathetic Neural Rewiring Cost: 2 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Parts of your character’s brain are structured in such a way that understanding how electronics and computer programs work is much more natural to them, but they often find other people to be a bit of a challenge. They gain +10 to Engineering, Computers, and Hacking, but -1 CHA. Feline Eyes Cost: 3 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Thanks to modifications to the layers of the eye, your character has eyes normally only found on predatory animals that allow them to see much clearer in the dark than other people. While they still cannot see in perfect darkness, there’s a good chance they’ll be the first to spot something at night, or appearing out of the depths of space. Winningest Smile Cost: 2 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Your character’s natural charm, in combination with enhancements to facial structure to make them look friendlier and kinder, allow them to make friends with people that might otherwise not even talk to them, for whatever reason. When making CHA-based rolls, the MFD will ignore bias from gender, genetics, location of origin, occupation, and the like, but not alignment, evil characters will probably never get along well with good ones. Mating Plumage Cost: 2 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: For millions of years, creatures have been using bright colours and flashy designs to signal other creatures of various things; warnings, invitations, or even more complex communication. By altering the makeup of the molecules that make up the fibers of your hair, both body and head, it has been given a beautiful, almost pearlescent effect. This gives them a +15 to Seduction, a +5 to Speechcraft, but a -5 to Stealth. Gravitational Blood Cost: 3 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Thanks to the gravisium now running through your character’s veins, gravity itself is 10% weaker than it would otherwise be within melee range of them. This has too many effects to list, but at GM discretion, it may force things like a -1 MFD on melee attacks against them, a +1 MFD on END and/or STR skills, a decreased movement speed do to reduced grip, and more. However, if your character has bled at all, it’s expensive to get that valuable metal back in their body, and they receive -2 HP healing from all sources, unless they’re willing to lose access to this gene mod and let their body settle without. Doing so will not return Gene Points, as the process is still a shock to the body, and may leave a character weak or sick for some time. Hyper-Tuned Reflexes Cost: 4 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: By essentially giving your character a modified version of ADHD, doctors can tune their reflexes to be several times faster than most people , down to about 100ms response times, a limit mostly enforced by their physiology, muscles can only move so fast without tearing. This grants a +1 to DEX and MECH, and allows the ability to re-roll agility rolls made for initiative once, but the second roll must be used. This can be done every time there is a call for initiative. The downside is pretty obvious however, your character is cursed with a short attention span and an utter lack of patience, and for that reason is sometimes a bit difficult to get along with. Catfall Cost: 3 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Thanks to modifications to the way your character’s vertebrae are joined, they can now twist around in the air like a cat, landing correct-side down with ease, and when they hit the ground, the force doesn’t shatter their spine nearly as easily. They only take 1 over their DEX score (1/DEX) times the damage from a fall that a normal person would (1 dmg per 3m, round down) and always land standing, probably after a roll, but one is not required. Extra Eyes Cost: 5 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 3 Description: In what is generally accepted as a deeply off-putting gene mod, your character has been gifted an additional pair of eyes, which they can control separately from their originals. While this gives your character a +2 PER, +10 in every combat skill, and an expanded field-of-view, people of their race who do not themselves have extra eyes find it terribly difficult to talk to them when all their eyes are visible, and they take a -2 CHA. Extra Ears Cost: 3 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: At some point in your character’s life, they decided two ears just wasn’t enough, and they got another pair. While it’s not quite as uncomfortable to look at as extra eyes, it does make helmets…. Difficult. Exosuits force their other ears into an uncomfortable squashed position when your character is wearing them, and it starts to hurt after a while; they’ll take any excuse to not wear their helmet. However, extra ears do give them +1 PER, as well as +10 Speechcraft, Stealth, and Languages. Self-completing Mental Faculties Cost: 5 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Your character no longer has to be fully lead through the answer to something; with some rewiring their brain can now, if nothing else, brute force an answer once only logical derivations remain. This comes with an extremely powerful bonus: every time they train a skill by 1, it costs 1 skill point less, minimum of 1. However, they have become somewhat annoying to converse with, because your character is often done analyzing people’s arguments before they have finished speaking, and since your character already knows what they’re going to say, your character cuts them off for their own counterpoint very quickly. They take -1 CHA and an additional -10 Bartering, Con, and Speechcraft. Adaptive Working Memory Cost: 4 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Through modifications to the way your character’s brain processes information in their short-term memory before it gets stored forever in their long term memory, your character has found a way to take the phrase 'failure is the best teacher' and turn it into a way of life. Once per game session, when rolling a skill check, if they fail to pass even MFD 2, you may choose to permanently increase that skill by +1, as though they had spent whatever required skill points on it. Their increase is effective immediately, and this also can trigger on crit-fails, regardless of actual fail level. Non-Circadian Cost: 3 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 5 Description: By enhancing your character’s ability to function well during the day with a bat-like affinity for being awake at night, they don't feel the need to sleep after spending one or the other awake. Your character gains 1 hour of 'exhaustion' (Not really, but it's a stat you'll need to track, sorry) for every four hours they spend awake. They start feeling and functioning as though they’re tired like a normal person after a number of hours of exhaustion have built up equal to 6 + their END score, and can be slept off with one hour of sleep for every hour of 'exhaustion'. Taking further tiers of this gene mod will make it a 8 hours awake to 1 hour 'exhaustion' ratio, then 15 to 1, then 50 to 1, and at five tiers your character stops needing sleep all together! Xenophilic Neural Mapping Cost: 3 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: It can be extremely difficult to understand alien races, especially intelligent ones, or worse yet, only the ruins of them. By totally reformatting the design of your character’s brain, they have at least the potential to understand the mentality of even the most exotic foregin thought patterns. You gain +15 Cultures, Languages, and Science, but they lose touch with ‘normal’ people almost completely, and suffer a -2 CHA with their own species. Adaptive Bone Marrow Cost: 4 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Through modifications to your character’s bone marrow, their body has an increased healing ability in response to shock. The turn after they take any vital damage, they restore up to 2 HP, no more than the damage dealt, and no more than healing them to full vital HP. This ability triggers a number of times equal to their END score before they have to rest and heal fully in order to regain their uses. Increased Muscle Fiber Density Cost: 4 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: By modifying the structure of the muscles in your character’s legs, they have gained the ability to jump unreasonably high and far. They can now jump a number of meters equal to their STR score, either straight up, straight out, or any mix they like. Have fun casually jumping between buildings and catching ships out of mid-air! Chameleon Cells Cost: 1 Gene Point Max Times Taken: 1 Description: No, your character can’t go invisible. But, thanks to an extremely complex modification to the structure of their skin, hair, and eyes, they can now change their colours as they see fit. The complexity of the patterns and range of colour they can manage is a Mental Resist roll and the details are entirely up to your GM, but they can have fun always being their date’s favorite colour, and other little things like that! List of Negative Gene Mods Low Tactile Sensitivity Value: 2 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: While it is certainly difficult to be able to precisely manipulate objects for some people, your character is worse at it than most. It’s not that they don’t try to be careful; it’s just that their sense of touch has been heavily damaged. Clumsy characters, while not necessarily lacking grace or agility, are very prone to mess up delicate tasks such as lockpicking, mixing chemicals, delivering mail, fixing a ship’s hull, reloading weapons, bomb defusal, and carrying delicate glass vials. This is reflected by a -5 to Explosives, Thievery, Climbing, Lifting, Machinery, and Carrying, as well as -2 MFD on any rolls made to catch things without dropping them. Inherent Physical Disability Value: 3 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Normally, this would be the fault of your character catching a laser blast to the knee and never getting it healed quite right, but that’s very rare in the days of such widespread advanced medicine. Instead, feedback from the immense amount of modding genes undergo has caused permanent internal damage in one of your character’s limbs. Any action in combat involving movement is 1 MFD harder. Substandard Auditory Cortex Value: 3 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: While not the same as being Deaf, your character still has a difficult time hearing things. Normally this would be from forgetting to put on noise cancellers when they were working in the turbine shafts, or listened to too much loud music as a kid, for them it’s feedback from some other modification to their genes, or maybe just damage passed down through the generations, or a random mutation… Don’t search too hard for an explanation. This manifests as a -1 MFD to any CHA skill rolls in any situation where they might have to talk at normal volumes or below, and a -1 MFD on all auditory perception checks. Also, if they’re trying to sneak and have to hold a conversation with anyone, forget about subtlety; In order to hold the conversation, both parties must take a -2 MFD penalty on their stealth rolls to successfully get the point across. Communicating with symbols or by written means is still silent, however. Taking this gene mod a second time makes your character outright and totally deaf. You can probably figure out what this changes. Damaged Cochlea Value: 2 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 8 Description: Simply put, the part of your character’s inner ear that records information about balance and head position is a little over-active, and it causes them to become reliably and seriously motion-sick when they get in vehicles. Whenever this character rides a vehicle, they must make an MFD 2 Physical Resist roll or immediately begin begin to shake and vomit, giving them a -1 MFD penalty to all rolls while they remain on the vehicle. This includes spaceships, good luck. Ever time taking this gene mod makes the MFD to pass one step harder. Center of Conversation Value: 2 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Your character has an irresistible, impulsive urge driven by something tiny in their brain. Every conversation could be improved with a little more of them. Or, a lot. In fact, do these people even know what they're talking about? Here, why doesn’t your character tell them what they know. It’d feel so good just to set things straight for them. Oversized Insular Lobe Value: 2 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: The best thing to ever happen to the galaxy; that’s how character’s with this genetic defect view themselves, thanks to the part of the brain responsible for their self-awareness having a few too many neurons to work with. Nopony can surpass their prowess- they shouldn’t even bother trying. Too Empathic Value: 3 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Your character is innately good, gets rewarded with too many good chemicals by their brains when they do the morally right thing. This makes life hard for them, particularly things that involve causing harm to others. Characters with this hindrance take a -1 MFD penalty to all rolls that they knowingly have the potential to harm or cause suffering, but they receive +1 CHA. Be careful, many out there will try to take advantage of your better nature. Prefrontal Cortex Miswiring Value: 2 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Your character has become extremely impulsive, and have trouble thinking things through as much as they should. At any time, they may decide to do or say something that they would not normally do or say under the circumstances. For example, during a conversation with the head of a corporation, your character might blurt out, “Your wife is much uglier than I expected.” Narcoleptic Value: 4 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Your character has a problem staying awake due to a chemical imbalance in the brain. When exposed to a specific stimulus, such as high amounts of stress, enveloping warmth, or being veiled in darkness, they fall asleep. What triggers their narcolepsy should be decided between you and the GM – the three triggers above are merely suggestions. Characters with this problem can resist the effects, attempting to not fall asleep when presented with their trigger effect, but to do so requires a frustratingly difficult MFD 1/2 Mental Resist roll. If not actively resisting the urge before the trigger is presented, the narcoleptic character may not even be presented a chance to resist. Faulty Attention Center Value: 2 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Some people want to watch the world burn. Others wouldn’t even notice that the world was burning if it landed on top of them (and even then they still might not realize what was going on) because some people are just not wired quite right. Your character gets by well enough, as long as they aren’t on watch when the pirates attack. Oblivious characters suffer a -2 PER penalty due to their inability to quickly pick up on key parts of the world around them, and tend not to notice things like land mines, or signs warning that the system they’re about to drop out of hyperspace into is currently being assaulted by pirates. Overactive Neocortex Value: 4 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Characters with this gene mod, thanks to slight damage to imagination centers in the brain, get themselves all worked up over things that haven’t happened yet, usually while there’s still a chance to avoid them, and things that have already happened, despite the fact that they’re currently still alive to worry about it. They might have trouble walking into wrecks or ruins, fearful of what might be around the corner or whose skeleton they might stumble into. A body on a bed might surprise them, driving them into a maddening frenzy of thoughts and speculations on how they died horrifically. Similarly, they tend to speculate horrifically on what might happen to them in dangerous or tense situations. Enlarged A.C.C. Value: 3 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: The Anterior Cingulated Cortex is the part of the brain that processes whether or not something is truth, and is critical in being able to lie. Your character’s is larger than normal, and that makes it really, really easy to lie, constantly. They cannot stop themselves from lying. No matter what the situation is, they are compelled to exaggerate, fib and outright lie. They are often convincing lies, but not always, and your character will be extremely good at losing trust. Overly Trusting Value: 2 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Your character might not realize how trusting they really are, but if someone told them gullible wasn’t in the dictionary they might not even try to find one to look it up. Somehow, no matter how many times it comes back to bite them in the butt, they still would be willing to trust in whatever information they’re given, as long as the source isn’t obviously hostile (and sometimes even then). Trusting individuals aren’t necessarily stupid, note – the same trick probably won’t work on them twice. But if you get a new trick, they’re likely to fall for it hook, line, and sinker unless someone else is around to help them see what’s actually going on. They take a -1 penalty to CHA due to their gullible nature. People like this tend to rely on their friends for guidance, especially if they’ve found some friends that don’t try to take advantage of their trusting nature. Intense Thermal Sensitivity Value: 4 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Most beings that survive long enough to spread across the galaxy are pretty good with varying temperatures, able to survive in a multitude of conditions. However, your character is an exception. They quickly become dysfunctional as the temperature changes, and have a hard time in particular with heat, because there's a limit to how much clothing you can remove to stay cool. Pick an optimal temperature for your character that would be survivable for other members of their species. If they go further than 10 degrees from it in either direction and can't compensate in some manner, clothing or active cooling, for instance, they take a -1 MFD on all rolls. Extremely Brittle Bones Value: 3 Gene Points Max Times Taken: 5 Description: Some shortcoming in your character's genetics has caused their bones to become thin, weak, and prone to breaking. When they do so, they tend to splinter into shards that can easily do damage to other parts of your character's body, making it noticeably easier to kill them. Every instance of this Gene Mod causes them to lose 10% of their max HP (Minimum 1 point lost, Round up), unless they are only at 1 max HP, at which point taking it again would prove instantly lethal.